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User: MichaelSmith

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Comments · 11,670

  1. Re:Self portriat on Brain Cells Observed Summoning a Memory · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What does a memory of what a memory being recovered look like?

    I sometimes have epileptic seizures which make me spontaneously remember past events. Sometimes it causes me to recall events which may not have happened. I am literally processing garbage data.

    The seizure often interferes with the recording of memory, probably because it is messing with the replay of memory at the same time, so it is difficult to report exactly what the experience consists of after the event, beyond a simple outline.

  2. Re:That it! on Microsoft Patents "Pg Up" and "Pg Dn" · · Score: 1

    This must be the patent that Microsoft claims that GNU/Linux infringes upon! The other ones include the power button and the space key. Which others ones did I miss?

    The Any key.

  3. Re:Try France. on Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I also don't know of any international corporations that use French as the corporate language.

    I work for a French multinational. Company policy is that the local language is to be used for meetings at each site. So German is the official language at our sites in Germany, English is standard in Australia, the US and the UK. French is obviously used in France.

  4. Re:Try France. on Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? · · Score: 1

    Well, if you speak only English then Paris would still be a good idea: there are more people here who know English.

    I was there with my girlfriend in 1997 and we had a lot of trouble finding good places to eat without speaking any french. Fortunately my s.o. spoke mandarin. It is a surprisingly useful language wherever you go.

  5. Re:Try France. on Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? · · Score: 1

    The difference is that English is the language of global communication.

    Must be why my Australian passport is in English and French.

  6. Re:Try France. on Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? · · Score: 1

    True that. Asking a Parisian your way is the same as insulting him.

    Don't know about that. I got lost in Paris once. I asked a man in broken French if he spoke English and he replied in better English than I have heard anywhere at all, even in England and helped me out.

  7. Re:Try India on Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? · · Score: 1

    salaries are very high.

    How can that be, given the low rates their employers charge their services at?

  8. Re:English at work countries... on Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? · · Score: 1

    He was referring to Australia, you know, that country down under.

    Yeah, where beer does flow and men chunder

  9. Re:elect obama on Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? · · Score: 1, Funny

    You simply knee in front of a womand and start praying in a stentorian voice. This won't get you laid tho; do you know why? Prayers don't work

    Tell me about it. The things you learn 20 years too late.

  10. Re:elect obama on Programming Jobs Abroad For a US Citizen? · · Score: 2, Informative

    To where?

    Almost any other place in the world have higher taxes than the US, so unless the taxes goes over 50% in total you can forget that argument.

    Singapore is a good option, as long as you don't mind living in a big, mildly fascist industrial park.

  11. Re:I pay online on Pitfalls of Automated Bill Payment · · Score: 1

    Yes I noticed that ActiveX is rather popular in South Korea. At one place where I worked there the internet gateway would not give you any external pages if you had a USB drive connected to the workstation. The weird thing was that people had worked with this system for years without finding that "feature", until I asked them to download a file for me.

  12. Re:wowsers I'm a nerd on Appeals Court Rules US Can Block Mad Cow Testing · · Score: 1

    The first thought that came to my head is that checking 100% of meat is a lot like the Ada programming language.

    In Ada you can turn runtime checking of array bounds, etc off. I know this is done in production releases of UI applications where the extra time makes the UI laggy.

    Perhaps it is more like Java where the checking is always on.

  13. Re:It's her day so... on Any Suggestions For a Meaningful Geeky Wedding Band? · · Score: 1

    I went for a titanium wedding band. I first read about a bike frame builder who made one from offcuts. A good titanium bike frame might be $2000. The ring cost us $300 for about 1000th as much material.

    You got ripped off. My Ti wedding ring was $98 from the local bike shop.

    Yes. A few other posters here reported prices like that. Oh well, I am only every going to buy one...

  14. Re:It's her day so... on Any Suggestions For a Meaningful Geeky Wedding Band? · · Score: 1

    I was thinking Titanium as well but he said it would scratch fairly easily and couldn't be polished like Gold or Silver. Is this the case as you have found it to be?

    It is a dull matte metal, not a shiny one. I have a titanium seiko watch and it has almost the same finish. For me, I prefer something which looks this way. The characteristics of the metal are more important to me.

  15. Directional access points on Wireless LANs Face Huge Scaling Challenges · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Cellular communication systems get around scaling issues by having smaller cells. A single base station might actually support four cells in different directions. I wonder if you could build a wifi antenna with a single lobe, then cluster the antennas to give a multi lobe access point.

    The base station would have to support multiple antennas but this wouldn't need to require a lot more transceiver hardware. The antennas could be multiplexed.

  16. Re:It's her day so... on Any Suggestions For a Meaningful Geeky Wedding Band? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I went for a titanium wedding band. I first read about a bike frame builder who made one from offcuts. A good titanium bike frame might be $2000. The ring cost us $300 for about 1000th as much material.

  17. Re:FIRST on Slashdot's Disagree Mail · · Score: 1

    I would be happy to mod you down for a small fee.

  18. Re:Reduce consumption to balance load on The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms · · Score: 1

    In this day and age there is no need for a separate physical grid. Just a parallel logical grid (a network) to connect the source and the consumer.

  19. Reduce consumption to balance load on The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When the supply of wind power collapses send a message through a network to appliances which can be switched off for a few minutes without causing too many problems.

    Heaters could work this way. They could pay a lower charge for energy in return for participating in load balancing.

  20. Re:Oops, Oort. on First Oort Cloud Object May Have Been Discovered · · Score: 1

    The Oort cloud could hold a planetary mass comet on a collision course with Earth and we would know about it only right before the event or just after.

    It's probably a conspiracy to build A Really Big bypass.

    Someone should go down to the local planning department to see if any demolition orders are on file.

    Yeah right after I get out of the bath.

  21. Re:outbid on Computer With UK Bank Customer Data Sold On eBay · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh, crap.. i was outbid by £10. If only i knew the content..

    Why? He is going to lose the system and runs the risk of being locked up as a thief. I would say you doged a bullet (unless you are joking).

  22. Re:Hand it back? on Computer With UK Bank Customer Data Sold On eBay · · Score: 5, Insightful

    i'd charge the pricks a consulting fee for my time. a few grand should cover it. i certainly wouldn't be handing back what is entirely his property, since he purchased it fair and square they have no recourse.

    Do that and you go straight to jail, don't pass go, don't collect $200. Your consulting fee will be seen as extortion.

  23. Re:Put it into deep space on Rosetta Disk Designed For 2,000 Years Archive · · Score: 1

    This would be a logical thing to put into deep space

    Its been done.

  24. Re:Privacy of Courts on NZ Judge Bans Online Publishing of Accuseds' Names · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's nothing stopping restrictions that essentially make it legal only to publish the name in official proceedings, and make people jump to a tiny extra hoop to get at them. It doesn't need to be impossible to get at - you just need to prevent it from being shoved in peoples places.

    But the internet makes it easy to get around measures like this. For example google might index the court website. Its a bit like how your phone number was right there in the phone book but as soon as it became possible to search for a person by number it became an issue for some people.

  25. Re:entire solar system "infection" is possible on Could There Be Life On Titan? · · Score: 1

    And it actually survived for about two years.